MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all.  That's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall.  But he had to have it; Tom said he'd _got_ to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look at old Northumberland!  Why, Huck, s'pose it _is_ considerble trouble?—what you going to do?—how you going to get around it?  Jim's _got_ to do his inscription and coat of arms.  They all do."

Jim says:

"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat."

"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different."

"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't."

"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this—because he's going out _right_, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record."

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms.  By and by he said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on.  He says:

"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend _or_ in the dexter base, a saltire _murrey_ in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron _vert_ in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field _azure_, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway n*****, _sable_, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, _Maggiore Fretta, Minore Otto._  Got it out of a book—means the more haste the less speed."

"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?"

"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in like all git-out."

"Well, anyway," I says, "what's _some_ of it?  What's a fess?"

"A fess—a fess is—_you_ don't need to know what a fess is.  I'll show him how to make it when he gets to it."